News

Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, Director of the Bioengineering study track at the Faculty of Engineering, knows exactly how to prompt women to choose a career in engineering – and she has no problem enrolling her students to helpProf. Rachela Popovtzer, Director of the Bioengineering study track at the Faculty of Engineering, knows exactly how to prompt women to opt for a career in engineering – and she has no problem enrolling her students to help

In December 2017 Prof. Dror Fixler of the Faculty of Engineering began his tenure as Director of the Bar-Ilan Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials. In his inaugural speech, Prof. Fixler presented his elaborate vision of the Institute. 

Michal Marcus, a doctoral candidate at the Neuro Engineering Research lab led by Prof. Orit Shefi has won the Rappaport Prize for Excelling Students of Biomedical Engineering.

Prof. Sharon Gannot, Head of the Speech and Signal Processing laboratories and the Signal Processing Track at the Faculty of Engineering, is one of a dozen leading researchers to win this year's Rector's Award for Scientific innovation, along with a 5,000NIS research grant. Prof. Gannot was awarded for his innovative scientific achievements this past year. 

Prof. Zeev Zalevksy, along with Prof. Jean Paul Lellouche and Research Associate, Dr. David Smadja, of BIU's Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, along with experts from Shaare Zedek Medical Center, develop nano-eye drops that can improve both nearsightedness and farsightedness.

Prof. Zeev Zalevsky of the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering, Prof. Jean Paul Lellouche, of the Department of Chemistry, and Dr. David Smadja, a research associate at BINA and Director of Research and Innovation at Shaare Zedek Medical Center developed eye-drops that have been found to repair the corneas and improve short and long sightedness. The nanoparticle solution called as “nanodrops” was successfully used on pigs’ corneas.

Congratulations to Dr. Rinat Meir, a postdoctoral researcher working under Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, who has won the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship for postdoctoral researchers for 2018/9.

Michal Marcus, a doctoral candidate at the Neuro Engineering Research lab led by Prof. Orit Shefi  has won the Rappaport Prize for Excelling Students of Biomedical Engineering. 
Michal (30), a married mother of 3, won the prestigious prize for her development of methods to lead medication directly to infected areas of the body (rather than flowing freely in the bloodstream). The project includes binding the drugs to magnetic nano carriers and using the magnets to lead the drug to the infected area.
Michal was informed of her win by Nobel Laureate Prof. Ciechanover, Aaron, who heads the Baruch and Ruth Rappopot Foundation's awards committee.

Flex Logix Technologies today announced that its embedded FPGA technology will be used by a consortium of Israeli semiconductor and systems companies including Mellanox, SatixFy, DSP Group and Autotalks under a license with Bar Ilan's SoC Lab, headed by Prof. Alex Fish (Engineering) which is part of the HiPer Consortium. The consortium will leverage Flex Logix's platform to design an architecture and technology 16nm evaluation chip and then use Bar-Ilan University's SoC Lab to prove out and implement a chip that can be used by each member company, reports Prnewswire, saying Bar-Ilan is one of the top technology Universities in Israel.

Optometric Examinations Through a Novel Application

6over6, headed by Dr. Ofer Limon - a graduate of all three Faculty of Engineering degrees - is based on a breakthrough technology which performs full optometric testing by means of a software application alone.

"We developed the technology thanks to a different kind of observation of optics and physics than what has been accepted up till now, and out of a deep understanding of optics and years of experience working alongside optometrists," he said. "Our technology enables people to perform the same optometric measurements on their mobile phones, at a time convenient to them, and without leaving their homes, and to use e-commerce platforms to purchase glasses for distance vision”

The Times of Israel reports that a team of researchers is using gold to develop cancer treatments. The team includes Prof. Rachela Popovtzer of BIU's Faculty of Engineering and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, as well as scientists from Tel Aviv University, and the Institute of Oncology, Davidoff Cancer Center at Rabin Medical Center. Their findings were first published in the journal Nanoscale in January 2016.

Congratulations to Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, Head of the Electro-Optics study program at the Faculty of Engineering and Director of the Nano Photonics Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), for being honored with the esteemed distinction of becoming a Fellow of the American National Academy on Inventors.

Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, of the Faculty of Engineering and Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), is the recipient of the Leon and Maria Taubenblatt Prize for Excellence in Medical Research for 2017. Prof. Popovtzer earned the award for her research on Theranostic Nanoparticles for Future Personalized Medicine.

Dr. Maya Aviv, Dr. Adi Vagerhoff and Dr. Eyal Cohen, all former students (now alumni) at Prof. Zeev Zalevsky's laboratory at the Faculty of Engineering, collaborated with with two Holon Institue of Technology students, and successfully developed a method to diagnose multiple sclerosis in two to three minutes from imaging, with a certainty close to 100%. They have developed an algorithm that can scan the hundreds of images produced by MRI in two or three minutes and possibly detect cells in the nervous system that are affected. 

(Orignial article in French)

Congratulations to grad student Tal-Shahar Ben Gal and PhD candidate Mariana Biederman, of Prof. Rachela Popovotzer's lab, who each won a 2017 Ministry of Science and Technology Scholarship for the Advancement of Women in Science for Graduate Students. Tal-Shahar won a 50,000NIS scholarship for studying bifunctional gold nano-particles enhancing the immune system. Mariana won an 80,000NIS scholarship for studying nanometric barcodes identifying bio processes inside the body.